Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  She almost laughed. A weird reaction to her fear. “Now I am.”

  “Where is the robot going?”

  Coryn shrugged. “I really don’t know. I sent her away until I’m sure you’re not planning to do us or her any harm.”

  He stared at her. “Call her back.”

  Coryn just stared at him.

  “We’ll find her.”

  “Who are you?” she asked, trying for a tone that suggested everything might work out all right and they really should just let her go on her way. She didn’t sound confident even to herself.

  “None of your business. But now you’re coming with us.”

  “People are expecting me.” There. Better. He couldn’t know she lied.

  He shoved her at the brown-bearded man, who stripped her wristlet and stuffed it in his pocket, unclipped a set of plastic restraints from his belt, pulled her arms behind her, and locked her wrists together.

  She struggled, and the man cuffed her on the shoulders. “It will do you no good.”

  The gravity of her choice to leave the city struck her then.

  She could die. Aspen could die, too. Paula could be destroyed. She had taken responsibility for the dog, and now she might have killed him because she’d been too stubborn to listen to Paula. She’d walked right into trouble. Even after Liselle died, she hadn’t thought that she could die.

  Now she did, and it made her feel liquid.

  The men started moving, the brown one, who was probably second-in-command, pulling her beside him. “Walk quietly,” he said. “Do not draw attention.”

  Attention from what? It didn’t matter; at that moment she couldn’t have spoken out loud if she’d had to.

  It required concentration to walk without stumbling, and her fear gave way to that focus. She stopped shaking and walked, surprised by how much the loss of her arms’ freedom of movement affected her gait.

  At least they were walking east, which was generally the way that Coryn needed to go anyway. It was away from Paula, though. Or at least away from the direction she had chosen to disappear into. Paula could run a long time—she recharged her energy storage systems with her motion and the sun, and she was very, very energy efficient.

  After a while, Coryn tried to slow down to end up back by the women so that she could talk to them, but her assigned watcher kept her right in front of him.

  It was hard to walk slightly bent over. A rock caught her foot, and she went down onto her knees. The brown man slapped her on the cheek, and she understood why the two women behind her looked down. She started glancing down from time to time, but she kept her head up. She was going to get to Lou and instinct told her being submissive wasn’t the right answer.

  She grew thirsty. The slosh of the water in the canteen on her captor’s back sounded like an unscratchable itch. The midday sun beat down on them. Sweat trickled between her bunched shoulder blades and stung her eyes.

  They followed a clear trail that wound through the cracks and valleys of hills, never getting near the crests, and sometimes blessedly in the shadows.

  It took a very long time before one of the men and one of the robots returned. The man said, “She got away. She took down Bryce and Mer.”

  The leader’s eyes widened. “Dead?”

  “Mer is. Bryce stopped responding to any commands, but he can probably be reloaded. I had to leave his body, though.”

  So Mer had been a human, Bryce a robot.

  The brown man bunched his fists, but the leader put a hand on his arm, restraining him. “Wait. She is not her robot. We have more important things to worry about.”

  The line of people thinned out and returned to walking in silence. From time to time a boot scraped on rock. Birds flew overhead, calling, and once a great V of geese flying north crossed low above them; she managed look up without tripping. Another thing she had seen pictures of but hadn’t ever seen in person. They flew even more precisely and even closer than she had expected. Beautiful.

  What other beautiful things might she miss if she died out here?

  Her feet were numb by the time they stopped. She flopped to the ground, desperate for water.

  The man who had been walking her drank from his own canteen and then poured a small cup for her and brought it over. She couldn’t make herself refuse, and the water tasted wonderful. Thankfully, he poured a second cup.

  The others had made a big semicircle, and she was basically part of the circle. She could see them all well now. Most were dressed in drab clothes that belonged out here, but all of the men had at least one or two things that belonged in the city. Bright colors, earrings, AR glasses. The women all wore modest clothes that covered their chests and arms, and two wore veils that hid their faces. The men splayed comfortably across rocks or the open dirt, but the women all sat reasonably straight, and together, across from her. When they glanced at her, they didn’t look very kind, but at least one looked as curious as the others looked cold.

  Returners? She hadn’t heard that they were patriarchal, though. A few articles had suggested religious groups. Maybe they were that. They used English, and it seemed to be native to them, but the dialect was a little off from the city, the words cadenced oddly.

  She wanted food. Funny how she almost always refused food from Paula, but now that Paula was gone, she felt starved. The leader came over and sat on a rock a few feet in front of her. “Where are you going and who are you meeting?”

  She struggled for something from her research that wouldn’t endanger Lou. “I’m going east. I’m meeting some friends from school. We’re going to help with the burning this summer.”

  “Idaho.”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t look like he believed her, but he also didn’t look like he cared. “Will your robot come back for you?”

  Which answer was safer? “Maybe.”

  “Will she?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  He looked bemused. “You owe me a robot now.”

  “Because you chased mine?”

  He slapped her across the cheek, hard enough to sting. “You are like a city kid. She’s metal and a program. Just tell me if she’ll come back. If she will, maybe you’ll be bait. If not, maybe you’ll be dead.”

  “She might.” That was really all she could say.

  “Then you might live tonight.” He stood up and walked away, stopping to talk to two of his men in low tones.

  She swallowed and blinked back tears. Damned if she was going to let these people see how much they frightened her.

  Had they murdered Lucien and the caravan? Was she walking with Liselle’s murderers?

  She shifted so she sat higher and looked around. If they’d taken anything, it would be in a pack. She couldn’t tell if the men’s high-tech gear had belonged to the Listeners, but that might explain why they had AR glasses out here where there shouldn’t be anything to see with them.

  Without her wristlet, she couldn’t take pictures, but she did her best to memorize faces and features.

  She also looked for anything she recognized from the vans. It reminded her of a memory game Paula used to play with her when she was little. She used to bring her a box with real things in it and have her look at it for a few minutes and then write down what she remembered. Only this time, when she’d been looking at the box she hadn’t known she was playing the game.

  She couldn’t do it. There wasn’t anything she recognized from the van. And, after all, there was no reason to assume these people were the murderers. Maybe there were multiple bands of dangerous people who didn’t think much of human life wandering around out here.

  Lou had lied and lied and lied.

  Even though she didn’t see or hear any signal, the entire line of people started putting their things away at once and standing up, getting ready to go.

  Without her wristlet, Coryn couldn’t tell time. It felt like hours before they stopped again. They came upon a small circle of lean-tos and tents nestled near some larg
e rocks and under a band of trees near a thin, cold stream. Two women and three men were already there, the men sitting on an old low wall that had probably once been paired with a big house or resort, talking. A group of women chattered and fussed over a large pot of soup that smelled like pepper.

  They took her cuffs off and shoved a bowl of the soup toward her. Her hands felt so weak she almost dropped the soup on the dirt before she managed to rest it on her knees. She shook her tingly right hand to get enough control to lift her spoon. She tasted potatoes and celery and milk, and way too much pepper.

  After she ate, two hard-eyed women came and stood a few feet away, and one offered to take her to the latrine. Two men watched them walk through the center of camp, trailing them at a distance. “My name is Coryn,” she said. “I just want to leave safely. I don’t wish you any harm.”

  They kept their faces down and ignored her.

  “Will you tell me your names?”

  The taller of the two women barked, “Silence!” in clear English. The other woman held a weapon of some kind, maybe a stunner or maybe even an old-fashioned gun with bullets. Whatever it was, the woman carried it with authority.

  The latrine turned out to be a square room with three tiny, stinking stalls and a single metal sink, but it was stocked with paper. A small mirror showed Coryn how unkempt she looked, and after she finished using the facilities she ran water on her hands and brushed sweat from her cheeks and ran more water and started in on her hair.

  The taller woman said, “Stop!” and Coryn took another swipe through her hair. As she walked back, she kept her head up even though the shorter woman held the weapon to the small of her back. The hard metal barrel poked at her if she slowed even a little. Fear of it made Coryn almost lose her footing twice. Blood thrummed through her ears and jaw, and she swallowed over and over and watched the path closely.

  A flash of light blue caught her attention. One of the women they passed wore the soft blue shoes she’d loved on Liselle. They were more scuffed than they had been in the van, but they were the same shoes. They had to be. The color was too unique.

  Her breath fluttered and she almost choked. At least she knew something; she knew who had killed her friends.

  Hopefully Paula would show up soon. But she’d almost certainly wait until after people had started going to sleep.

  The sun still slanted through camp, giving everything a dusky golden look and making it appear almost pleasant in spite of how hard and poor it actually was.

  The silent women took her pack and put her in a tent near the front and center of the encampment. The man who’d chased Paula sat in front of her tent, cross-legged on the ground, angled so he could see if she tried to get out or if anyone tried to get in from the front.

  She sat in the tent doorway behind a zipped mesh panel and looked out at whatever passed in front of her. Most things happened behind the tent, which was probably exactly how her captors had designed it. A few people walked by on the way to the latrine and back. A brown dog with a crooked tail hopped past the tent on three good legs, favoring the other one. The air smelled faintly smoky from the cook fires.

  She had almost nothing. No Paula. No food of her own. Nothing from her pack. Only the small box with her mother’s earrings in it. She resisted touching it.

  By the time the sky faded to true dark, the camp was also dark, all of the fires doused. Here and there, soft, diffuse beams shone down from cupped palms as people walked in front of her. From time to time, someone exchanged murmured greetings with her taciturn guard.

  As it grew quiet, she started to shake. She imagined Paula and Aspen coming for her, and Paula getting caught in nets, or Paula getting shot, or Paula being captured in some other way and reprogrammed. The more tired she grew, the more jumbled things became, until she saw Paula lying on the ground the way Lucien had, one arm in water and part of her face gone, blood all around.

  Paula was a robot. She didn’t have red blood to leak. But Coryn still saw it coming from her, and struggled not to cry, holding her hands tight to keep them from shaking.

  When people came by it felt a little better, even though they were enemies.

  She fell asleep sitting up and cold, but so bone tired that even fear and curiosity weren’t enough to keep her from falling deeply asleep and dreaming of the city. She woke with tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and looked out through the mesh. The camp was quiet now, except that her guard lay right in front of the tent, snoring.

  Stars filled the sky. This had become her favorite thing about Outside, the Milky Way looking like a soft blanket covering the sky and the bright lights of stars, planets, and space stations barely indistinguishable one from another. Tonight, it was as beautiful as she had ever seen it, but it didn’t make her happy in the way it usually did. She felt numb.

  Surely Paula would come soon.

  She watched the stars, fighting tears and swallowing sobs, struggling to keep herself strong. Once, she spotted a flaming meteor streaking right to left near the horizon. Planes flew overhead, red and white blinking lights accompanied by a dull roar.

  She must have dozed off again because she woke to a less-than-black sky that hid the Milky Way from her but still allowed for the brightest stations and planets to shine.

  Her hands had stopped shaking.

  The slight hum of electric engines seemed to come from at least two directions.

  She couldn’t see them.

  Her guard had woken and moved to his old spot, and he stood, staring.

  The sound seemed familiar, low and throaty and efficient.

  Then she saw them. Three ecobots, their outlines an unmistakable silhouette against the barely lightening sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  One by one, ecobots drove right past her tent and parked. She counted five of them before it dawned on her that they hadn’t come to save her. They didn’t know she was here at all, and if they did, why would they care?

  There was another clue. Even though she couldn’t see most of the small, ragged village from inside of her tent prison, the camp sounded quite pleased to see the ecobots. People chattered excitedly, and two of the younger men near her actually clapped.

  She didn’t understand. She sat mute while more ecobots drove by in front of her and parked.

  She couldn’t stand up in the tent, but she scooted as close to the front as she could get, pressing her nose against the mesh. People cheered and stamped.

  The leader’s voice shushed them. She’d come to recognize it, gruff and deep, full of authority. In spite of that, there was a tiny bit more cheering before the camp went quiet. She could only hear some of his words, but she got the impression that ecobots coming to camp represented a victory of some kind. It also apparently represented work, as people started walking by her with more purpose than she had seen before.

  Her guard glared at her, and she moved an inch back. He returned his attention to the caravan of ecobots and trucks. They seemed to be gathering behind her in what would be the center of the overgrown campsite. A few rattling trucks that looked like they had come from farms trailed the line of ecobots. They seemed to be occupied by humans, although she wasn’t really close enough to tell whether they were human or the most humanoid of the ecobots. Although if they were bots, she reasoned, there would be no need for them to use the trucks.

  What was happening? What could these outlaws possibly have to do with ecobots?

  She tapped on the mesh in front of her and said, “I’d like to use the restroom.”

  The guard shouted “Female guards!” at someone she couldn’t see.

  It took longer than it had before, but two came and stood beside the opening of the tent as she crawled out. At first, her legs felt so stiff from sitting all night that it was hard to stand. She had to shake the leg that had been cut a few times before it held her weight comfortably.

  It was colder outside than it had been in the tent. A few very high clouds were just beginning to lose the s
unrise tints and fade to pale white in the otherwise-clear sky.

  “Hurry,” the same woman who had told her to be quiet the previous night commanded. “Look down. Keep your eyes down.”

  As before, the women flanked her, and this time her guard walked behind her.

  So she wasn’t supposed to see? At first she hadn’t really needed the restroom; she had come out to see who and what had arrived. Now she had to go so bad she wanted to stop and cross her legs. A deep breath banished tears that wanted to overwhelm her.

  How could she find out what was going on?

  “I’m thirsty,” she said. She would have to lift her head to drink, and they had always given her water when she asked.

  “When we get back,” the woman said.

  The younger woman who walked on her far side was new, and not much bigger than Coryn. Maybe there was some advantage there. She scuffed her foot and tripped over a rock, rolling so that she managed to glance at the newcomers as she fell into the other small woman, hoping to knock her down.

  No luck. The woman pirouetted away, turned and kicked her.

  She managed not to pee her pants.

  Her other guard growled.

  Coryn got up onto all fours, sharp stones digging into her palms and knees. She looked up, quickly, assessing.

  There were more people, now. Ten or twelve new ones as far as she could tell, although the new people had started mixing with the old. The ecobots had parked themselves beside the road in a long line, and some of the people from the camp were swarming up and down the big metallic bodies.

  Her mind couldn’t quite wrap around that.

  The woman who had kicked her lifted her up, and the man who had been walking behind them snarled at her, “Keep your head down.”

  “Why are there ecobots here?” she asked.

  “Shhhh. Like us, they are serving a purpose. You do not.”

  “What purpose?”

  No answer.

  She walked slowly and demurely the rest of the way to the bathroom, keeping her head down and listening as well as she could. Multiple low conversations went on all around her, all in English, but none quite understandable. She heard the word “city” more than a few times, and also “plans” and “freedom” and other connector words that made no sense out of context. She also heard the word “Wilders” more than once, and wasn’t that what Lou was? A Wilder? Certainly these people weren’t wilding anything.